Extreme Burn

Mike Donavanik
Year Released: 2011

Categories: Floor Aerobics/Hi-Lo/Dance , Total Body Workouts


Extreme Burn is a primarily strength workout with cardio intervals and abs. Workout 1 is 42 minutes (including warm up/stretch) and Workout 2 is 46 minutes, or they can be combined into a longer workout, which the DVD menu allows for. The workout has already been broken down, so I’m just going to add my opinions.

Mike leads (maybe 75% working with you and 25% pointing out form on his two women background exercisers) and there is a countdown timer, not for the entire workout but for each :60 or :30 interval (and the title of the exercise you are doing), which I found motivating.

W1: After a 3 minute warm up, you spend about 10 minutes on the first strength circuit, about 7 minutes on the cardio circuit (all cardio was 30 seconds each, the entire circuit is then repeated once), about another 10 minutes on strength, and about 7 minutes on abs (like cardio, the ab exercises were all 30 seconds each, the entire circuit is then repeated once), and a 4 minute stretch. I especially liked the renegade row/jump up/overhead press/windmill move in the second strength set! A lot of the moves were functional and fun and really worked the core, and he did a great job at hitting all the muscle groups (biceps/triceps/shoulders/legs/core/back-chest not hit so much, triceps hit the hardest). Some of the strength moves were :60 on each side while some were :30 and he had you switch sides halfway through the :60 countdown. I would say the workout is high intermediate.

W2: The structure of W2 is the same as W1 but as Mike points out (several times) the exercises themselves are much more challenging. I felt the need to go a little lighter on some of the exercises because Mike would incorporate hops side to side or functional twisting, or full range of motion moves, but it still really kept the heart rate up. I would say my favorites were the tricep pushup/squat thrust/clean and press, snatch/cross/press, and the spiderman pushups/reverse T raise-those were really tough! The cardio was especially fun and harder than in W1 for sure, with mountain climbers, explosive donkey kicks (a new one to me), and bear crawl/star jump (and all repeated). The abs were also significantly more challenging and I was wiped by the end! I would rate this workout as low-mid advanced.

I enjoyed both of these workouts and would use them for a strength day (with some cardio mixed in) and will likely use W2 more than W1, because it was simply more challenging and fun to me, although they are both well thought out and Mike is great! I can see myself picking up his second workout at some point, I think he really has a talent for developing and instructing workout DVDs. Overall grade A!

Instructor Comments:
Mike is a nice instructor. He does say “don’t stop now” “you know me better than that” and “let’s keep going” a LOT but wasn’t really annoying-I think he was just enthusiastic about working you out hard and providing a challenging workout routine to the viewer. He did push his backgrounders hard while not sounding critical towards them at all. I would definitely consider buying more of his workouts.

Emily B.

08/28/2012